Appearing at Scaleforum was this Hurst Nelson 14T chlorine tank, incredibly generously donated by Colin Craig.  He was building a batch for Mostyn and added an earlier version for me.  These would not have ventured to the Black Country but years ago I helped Dave Clarke, Along with Simon Stephens, take out his layout Amlwch to various shows around the country. Amlwch (pronounced Amlook) was the location of the Associated Octel plant and while the exchange sidings for it never featured on the layout and we never had the chemical tank trains its a nice little nod to a bit of my personal modelling history.

None of this wagon is any of my work.  I did tweak the weathering a little from how Colin supplied it as the top of a white tank in the steam era wouldn’t be a clean as in Mostyn’s diesel era.  I added the required wet look for Brettell road.

For more on Associated Octel click here.

Next up another tank that I’ve not had a lot to do with really.  The recently introduced demountable tank wagon RTR from Clarke Railworks.   I rarely buy anything new RTR and this is the first brand new rail vehicle I’ve brought from any of the new generation manufacturers. In fact it’s the first new RTR thing I’ve brought since 2017 and the time before that was 2012 I think.  I seriously doubt I’m paying any bonuses in RTR land at the moment.

So the wagon then, nice box and instruction booklet (looking at youtube reviewers these things seem important).  The box will still look nice in my bin too!  To be fair the instruction booklet is nicely laid out with clear illustrations of how to swap the wheels for em/P4.  Which is dead easy, P4 wheels just drop in once the brake rigging has been unclipped and brass bearings are already installed. The brake shoes are kind of wide for 00 and a bit narrow for p4 but not enough to make you want to faff about moving them.  The wagon weighs 30 grams out of the box which is lighter than my aimed for standard of 50g but some test shuffling around on Brettell Road didn’t show up any problems with this.

The couplings were replaced for Smiths and the (strangely) missing brake gear safety loops added.  There a bit of a trench down the side of the tank and this was filled with Mr Surfacer 1000 liquid filler and gently sanded back.  The colour was matched from a mix of blue and black.  You don’t want to completely eradicate the line as it is visible on the real wagon.  I think the branding should be parallel to the wagon and not the tank (which itself slopes at one end) but I might be wrong. Either way I left it as it was.  The lamp irons were painted black (white lamp irons weren’t a thing yet) and that was about it, with the obligatory weathering of course.